Summerdale, AL
Summerdale wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Summerdale at the 75th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 870 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Summerdale at the 77th national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Summerdale's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Summerdale: 61.6% of its 870 buildings, versus 10.8% Indirect and 27.6% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Summerdale ranks
Inside Alabama, Summerdale sits at just the 58th percentile even though it scores 75th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Summerdale ranks 7,994 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,982 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 252 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Summerdale's 75th-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Summerdale's 61.6% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 870 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Summerdale. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Summerdale, see the exposure-zones guide.